Two Strange Lives, One Great Writer

PAUL EDWARDS: To read – and reread – David Foot is to understand the height to which cricket writing might aspire. Some of his books are masterworks and I shall certainly take one with me when I go to Taunton tomorrow

Somerset is so magical a county that the train from Bristol Temple Meads to Taunton should leave from platform nine and three-quarters. The journey lasts barely half an hour yet it takes one deep into the West Country, a land renowned for myth, rebellion, and literature; for King Arthur, Monmouth and Coleridge.

Cricket, too, of course. Somerset may no longer play at Glastonbury, Yeovil or Frome but the intimacy of the County Ground, even after its recent redevelopments, ensure that it is always my first port of call once South Western Trains have decanted me onto that familiar, featureless platform.

And I am there for the match against Hampshire this weekend. Or rather, I am not. For it is late April and the times are so strange that we are learning to live by two calendars. According to one of them, the blandest and most necessary, I have stayed in Southport for the last month or more.

According to another, which still haunts me, I began my season at Hove, returned to Old Trafford for the County Championship opener against Kent and then watched Ollie Pope, the next young master, at The Oval this week.  Tomorrow I am off to Somerset, where at least a portion of my heart lies. I believe the train departs Lime St. at just after ten o’clock.

But if it does, I shall not be on it. For the moment we must be governed by our heads, and our substantial consolation is the degree of fellowship we share with thousands of others for whom this should also be the glad season of their year. So we are learning to make do.

There is barely a match of consequence from the last 20 summers that has not been shown on our televisions sets; polls have been conducted in desperate abundance by wild-eyed sub-editors to find the greatest batsman, bowler, fielder, tea lady and bar steward in cricket’s history; we are all reading more and dreaming more; we are wondering what the next month might bring, conveniently ignoring the fact that even tomorrow is something of a mystery.

But we are all in it together. “What do you miss least about cricket?” we were asked on Twitter last weekend. The redoubtable Nick Sharland’s reply was passionate and had no truck with footling exception: “Literally nothing. Give me Henry Blofeld commentating on pigeons in the rain and Geoff Boycott ranting about ooncoovered pitches and I will accept it like a gift from the heavens.” Quite right, Nick. Oh, to hear a bowler say he has put the ball in good areas.

^{How we all crave a dose of county cricket - even perhaps, at this point, a rain delay...}

But I will still miss Taunton and thus it is fitting I keep the promise I made last week to reveal the name of the writer who knew and understood county cricketers better than any other. That pledge led to me being accused of employing something called “clickbait”, a charge which might have carried more weight had I understood it. No matter. The work of David Foot awaits us.

David spent almost his entire cricket-writing career covering Gloucestershire and Somerset. He never covered a Test Match nor particularly wanted to do so. In Rob Steen’s fine series of profiles This Sporting Life: Cricket (1999) David says the following: “I’m also desperately uninterested in the politics of cricket. Lord MacLaurin [then the chairman of the ECB] means nothing to me. Two divisions means nothing to me.” What meant a great deal to him, though, were the careers and cares of the West Country cricketers who became his trusted friends.

The result of this closeness is a series of books which considers the lives of sportsmen with a degree of sensitivity only acquired by intimacy and love. There are major biographies of Walter Hammond and Harold Gimblett, the latter being the author’s particular hero.

There is a triptych, Cricket’s Unholy Trinity, which considers the careers of the following: Charlie Parker, the Bolshevik slow left-armer who once grabbed Sir Pelham Warner by the lapels; Cecil Parkin, the comedian who bowled off-breaks and leg-breaks for Lancashire before being dropped by England for criticising his captain in a ghosted article in 1924; and Jack MacBryan, the stylish Somerset amateur described by Wilfred Rhodes as playing more like a Yorkshire professional.

Yet my own favourites are the two books of profiles: Beyond Bat and Ball and Fragments of Idolatry. Of the dozen profiles in the latter, only eight are of first-class cricketers, but I suspect you will read them all, because if someone interested David, they will probably interest you. Consider these lines from his deeply affectionate study of the Middlesex and England batsman, Patsy Hendren:

It is true that Patsy had the kind of unbeautiful proletarian face that might belong to the occupant of a corner seat in one of those functional stout bars in his parents’ Ireland. This should not imply an alcoholic flush, more the slightly weary features of a peat worker’s plainness. An uncomplicated face, not troubled too much by the superfluous demands of intellect, an innocent face. The raucous, boozy inhabitants on The Hill, at Sydney, renowned for and proud of their insensitivity, were always on nodding terms with him as he patrolled the outfield.

But it must be understood that David was very much a working journalist, who took pride in filing copy of the right length and on deadline. He was one of The Guardian’s county reporters in the age when that newspaper might send three or four writers to matches around the country.

^{There will be no cricket at Taunton for a good while yet - an image that doubles up as the cover shot of this month's Cricketer magazine, by the way}

Fragments considers two such writers, RC Robertson-Glasgow of The Observer and Alan Gibson of The Times, both of whom were prey to depression. David, himself, was a master of the 400-word match report, even on days when 23 wickets had fallen. (I was going to suggest you might try it sometime but then realised we have not the slightest clue when any of us will have the opportunity.)

One day some diligent researcher will get together with a wise publisher and bring out a book of David’s so far uncollected journalism; some of it has nothing to do with cricket at all. The breadth of his interests and the depth of his understanding are perfectly illustrated in his piece on Siegfried Sassoon, war poet, landowner, poor cricketer and author of a wonderful three-volume autobiography. This is the David’s intro from Beyond Bat and Ball.

Siegfried Sassoon’s almost comically gawky physique and saturnine features should be discounted. He was perhaps at his happiest of all on the cricket field. The childhood innocence, scarred though it was by the horrors of the trenches and other private torments, was still discernible as he stationed himself at mid-on to miss his catches and think again of Woolley, his imperishable hero.

David’s work is an example of what a writer might achieve when he learns to look – and look again; when he understands that a confidence is not to be betrayed for the sake of a cheap headline; when he realises that writing about someone is an honour not to be smirched by gossip.

He knew Viv Richards, Zaheer Abbas and Mike Procter but he accorded the county debutant no less respect. To read – and reread – David Foot is to understand the height to which cricket writing might aspire. Some of his books are masterworks and I shall certainly take one with me when I go to Taunton tomorrow.

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